JAC Volume 3, Issue 1/2

Ever since teaching my first advanced composition course eight years ago, I've encouraged student revision by arranging for peer readings of preliminary drafts and trying to allow sufficient time for revision before I graded papers. On the whole, I have been pleased with the results, but, of course, my judgments have been impressionistic. Recently, having evolved a model for an advanced writing course that satisfies me and a means of recording reader response that lends itself to close examination,¹ I decided to study student revisions made in three types of discourse: expressive, persuasive, and informative writing. I wanted to know:

• if revisions were superior to preliminary drafts,
• how much revision was occurring,
• what kinds of revision were being made, and
• what variations existed between types of discourse and between writers of different ability.

Since little is known about the revision process of advanced composition students, the following results may be of interest to teachers of advanced composition. I found that for the majority of writers revision clearly produces superior papers, the greatest increase in quality being in expressive writing and the least in informative discourse. However, the amount of change is not necessarily correlated to the quality of change, especially for less able writers. In addition, changes made by advanced composition writers, like those of experienced adult writers Nancy Sommers studied, are markedly different from those of college freshmen: in my study, sentence and multi-sentence revisions comprise over half of the total number of revisions made in the three assignments in contrast to the dominance of surface and lexical changes made by the freshmen that Sommers studied.² The kinds of revision made appear to vary with discourse type, the contrast between informative writing and the other two types being greatest. Finally, while less able students in a particular discourse may make fewer revisions than more able writers, and at times, different kinds of revision, the most significant finding is that less able students do not usually make the most gain in quality for the discourse feature they revise the most. The opposite is true of more able writers, however. Less skilled writers appear to need more help than they are customarily provided in interpreting reader responses and in applying them to their revisions.

The Course

My course is based on discourse theory described by James Kinneavy in A Theory of Discourse, and progresses from expressive writing to persuasion and exposition. Each assignment includes a set of discourse analysis scales which detail relevant discourse features, classified according to style, organization, and logic, and which are used by writers, readers, and the teacher to evaluate preliminary drafts. The scales and comments written on them provide a basis for small group discussion and, afterwards, each evaluation is given to writers for use in revision.

No single view of revision dominates the class. On one hand, Donald Murray's view fits its structure: "[Revision] is what the writer does after a draft is completed to understand and communicate what has begun to appear on the page”³ According to this view, one might expect writers to write and revise "internally," as Murray says, to discover their meaning before sharing papers with peer readers. Readers would then help the writer revise "externally" or communicate this meaning to an intended audience. Yet according to Nancy Sommers, separation of the revision process into discrete linear stages is not always in keeping with ways many experienced writers such as journalists, editors, and academics revise. Sommers defines revision differently, to encompass its on-going nature which her research demonstrates: revision is "a sequence of changes in a composition—changes which are initiated by cues and occur continually throughout the writing of a work."⁴ To a degree, Sommers' view is also reflected in my course, because by mid-semester, most students feel confident enough—or sufficiently pressured by time constraints—to bring tentative drafts to the groups. Readers then help writers explore their subjects, not merely communicate existing content in a more effective fashion. And, sometimes, even when writers think they know what they want to say, hearing it expressed by readers can encourage rethinking and stimulate major revision.

Methodology

At the start of last semester, I interviewed the eighteen students enrolled in my advanced course to discover their views of revision. Sommers found most freshmen writers viewed revision as a "cleaning up" act while one representative experienced writer she interviewed described it as "taking apart what I have written and putting it back together again." Half of my students viewed revision as freshmen did, and half said at one time or another they made major changes in their work. Two students from the latter group used the text-editing feature of computers to which they had access in order to make extensive revisions, opening for me an interesting area for future investigation.

At semester's end, I kept the preliminary drafts, final graded papers, and discourse analysis scales for the assignments under study: an autobiographical narrative, a persuasive essay, and information discourse. Two experienced advanced composition teachers read and graded the assignments, using the scales' stylistic, logical, and organizational criteria as a basis for their evaluation. They were trained in use of the scales, and several checks were made as they progressed. Students had typed both preliminary and final revisions of their papers, and I selected clean copies for readers, striking out student names. Preliminary and final versions of each assignment were mixed and divided equally between the readers. Almost always, they were unable to determine by appearance whether a particular paper was a preliminary or final draft. After the papers were evaluated, preliminary and final versions of each assignment were paired and readers determined the degree of change made in the features of style, logic, and organization. Readers were also trained in the use of these scales, and several checks made as they progressed.

While readers were busy, I used another copy of the papers to classify the kinds of revisions each student had made, using a scheme developed by Lilliam S. Bridwell in which seven levels of revision are identified—surface, lexical, phrase, clause, sentence, multi-sentence, and text—and several operations within each level, chief among them, addition, deletion, order shifts, and substitutions.⁵ When readers finished, I examined the results for the entire class as well as for the five students in each assignment who received the highest final grades and the five who received the lowest final grades.

Findings

Quality. Revision improved preliminary drafts in each assignment. The degree of quality improvement was greatest in expression, least in informative writing.

Quality Ratings of Papers*

Eleven students improved in expression, and twelve each in persuasion and informative writing. In each assignment, two lowered their final grade while the remaining students stayed at the same level. It is interesting that only four students excelled in all three assignments; nine did well in two assignments (two-thirds of them in expressive and informative writing); and five did well in only one (four in expression one in informative writing).

These results lend support to Richard Lloyd-Jones' claim that a writer's skill in one type of discourse may differ from his or her skill in another.⁶ In terms of Kinneavy's three classifications of organization, style, and logic, most improvement in expression occurred in logic, defined as evidence of an emotionally valued goal; in persuasion, logic or use of ethos, pathos, and inductive/ deductive logic; and in informative writing, organization that maximized the information's surprise value.

Examination of the five most and five least successful writers reveals that revision aided the most successful writers more than the least successful. In persuasion, the least successful writers actually lowered their composite grade, due primarily to two students' work.

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This data suggests that the most successful students may have been more highly motivated, more able to interpret readers' responses, and more skilled in revising than the latter.

Extent of revision. Extent of revision was determined by the readers' degree of change ratings. A 5 indicated little or no revision, mostly in surface features; a 3 indicated moderate revision, the addition, deletion, reordering, or substitution of phrases, clauses, and sentences; and a 1indicated a total rewrite. Students revised the persuasive essay most (3.81) and the informative discourse least (4.55); expression was in-between (4.05). That degree of change does not correlate exactly to quality of revision is shown in persuasion where most effort was placed, but not most improvement realized. The lack of correlation is also shown between change in the features of organization, style, and logic and grade improvement. As a group, writers revised persuasive organization the most, but did not improve this feature most. They revised informative logic and style the most, but did not improve them most. Only in expression did they both revise and improve logic most. Overall, however, writers who improved their grades tended to revise more than those whose grades remained the same between drafts. And the latter tended to revise more than those whose grade decreased between drafts.

Only in informative writing did the two writers whose grades fell revise more than those whose grades increased or remained the same.

The disparity between degree of change and quality lessens with the most successful five students and increases with the least successful five. For example, the greatest degree of change rating for the most successful students was in expression (3.66) where they also achieved their greatest quality increase (.98); the greatest degree of change rating for the least successful students was in persuasion (4.12) where they achieved their lowest quality rating (-.11). Differences between the most and least successful writers are equally apparent when the discourse features of organization, style, and logic are compared. In expression, the five most successful writers made most change in logic, which improved most in quality. In persuasion, they made most change in style, which also improved most in quality. Only in informative writing did they make most change in style and not improve it most. By contrast, in expression the five least successful writers made most change in organization, and its quality rating was lowest (it actually decreased). In persuasion, they made most change in organization, and again, its quality rating was lowest (it also decreased). Finally, in informative writing they made most change in organization and this time its quality in- creased, second only to the increase in logic. Clearly, the least successful writers in each assignment are not rewarded in a manner commensurate with the degree of change they make.

The least successful writers' pattern of changing organization most sent me to the discourse scales which student readers and I had completed: never in numerical ratings or comments was organization noted as the feature most, in need of revision. Apparently they had misunderstood or ignored reader responses. On the other hand, features that the most successful writers changed most were indicated as the ones most needing change. I conclude the least successful writers need additional guidance in interpreting reader responses and in revising.

Kinds of revision. As Sommers and Bridwell have demonstrated, many college freshmen and high school seniors emphasize surface and lexical revisions; experienced writers, as Sommers shows, concentrate on the sentence level, predominately additions and deletions.⁷ The advanced composition students I studied support these results. Sentence and multi-sentence level revisions dominated, except in informative writing where surface and lexical levels slightly exceeded those of sentence levels. For comparison purposes, I have included below with my class results Bridwell's figures for the secondary students she studied:

Of revisions made on the sentence level, advanced writers made 62.4% in expression; 61.3% in persuasion; and 31.4% in informative discourse. I believe there are at least three reasons sentence-level revisions decreased in informative writing. First, less time was available for students to revise when informative writing was assigned. Concurrent with it in the second half of the course was on-going research in preparation for a formal report. Second, informative writing may simply require less revision than the other two types of discourse. Once a writer has organized his information, he may feel he has completed his task. Third, informative writing is less person-oriented than the other types of discourse, and writers may have been less interested in making major revisions because they had invested less of themselves in it. Perhaps if teachers want to encourage revision, they should emphasize person-oriented rather than thing-oriented discourse.

Comparison of the kinds of revision made by the five most and five least successful writers in each assignment begins with the total number of revisions each group made: 511 for the former and 437 for the latter. In expression, both groups made a full range of revisions, yet per person, the most successful students made more than the least successful at every level. The magnitude of revision is especially impressive when one considers that the most successful students' preliminary drafts were rated .52 above the least successful students. Although in both groups additions outnumbered deletions, most additions being made at the sentence level, the quality and relevance of the most successful students' additions were superior to those of the least successful ones.¹⁰

Relatively few substitutions and order shifts were made at phrase, clause, and sentence levels in all three types of discourse for both groups. In persuasion, the most successful writers also exceeded the less successful in number of revisions at all levels except the surface in which the latter group exceeded the former by two. Further, the relationship between revisions made by addition and by deletion is of interest in persuasion. The most successful writers added more phrases, clauses, and sentences than they deleted. 92.38. The least successful deleted more than they added: 57:42. A review of the five papers written by the least successful students shows that writers deleted sections where readers disagreed with them or had questions rather than tried to develop new ways of conveying their points. The audience's reaction seems to have been too great a challenge. Perhaps it is for these reasons that the revised persuasive papers fell in quality. Only in informative discourse do the least successful writers exceed the most successful ones in number of revisions, at both lexical/surface levels and sentence levels. This might be explained by the fact that in informative writing the most successful group earned its highest grade on a preliminary draft (3.2) and may have seen little reason for revision. in addition, a review of the least successful students' papers shows that despite an addition to deletion ratio of 31:20 in phrases, clauses, and sentences, their papers needed more extensive additions on the sentence level to provide adequate information for reader comprehension.

Conclusion

My study affirms the importance of having advanced composition students revise their work. However, it suggests that less successful writers produce less successful revisions than the more successful writers and that they might benefit from help in interpreting and incorporating reader responses in their revisions. They also may be less motivated to revise than the more successful writers. They may lack interest in writing and understanding of the importance of revision. Thus, while peer group evaluation of drafts is suitable for more successful writers, the less successful ones appear to need, in addition, the attention that individual conferences offer. The study also suggests that ability to revise at the sentence level may develop more readily in expressive or persuasive discourse rather than in informative, and when sufficient time is allowed. Further, the relatively few order shifts and substitutions in phrases, clauses, and sentences suggests that advanced writers of all abilities may need additional work in sentence construction. Finally, more attention should be focused on the influences of peer, teacher, and self-evaluation on revision; on the conception of revision held by the less-skilled writer in advanced composition and what can be done to develop it; and on the effects of discourse type on revision, perhaps by an alternate method to mine such as an intensive case-study of a few individuals, in order to confirm, alter, or refute my observations.

In short, the revision practices of advanced writers is an inviting and relatively undeveloped field, and one which merits further examination.